Anyone who believes we are winning the War on Terror doesn’t understand the goals of AQ. They wanted us to be afraid and to spend our money, both of which the government is doing in spades…..one really has to ask, then, who is winning?

NEW YORK – As a foreign correspondent for NBC News, I haven’t spent much time in the United States during the last decade. I return only occasionally to check in with colleagues, visit family, or, this last time, to research a documentary for MSNBC.

The documentary, still in the works, is about the Global War on Terrorism, and what it has done to our military, economy and American society in general. Perhaps because the subject was on my mind, I found a recent travel experience especially meaningful.

Through my work I travel to some of the busiest airports in high-risk areas. Just this year I have been in Egypt, Tunisia, Iran, Bahrain, Libya, France, Italy and many other countries. But I have yet to feel so angry, so embarrassed or so scrutinized as I did going through airport security for a flight from Los Angeles International Airport to New York’s JFK while visiting home.

. . . . .

I’ve watched American troops fight, and sometimes die, to drive the Taliban and al-Qaida from Afghanistan, and to secure free elections in Iraq. They have been fighting for other people to be free. I was horrified to see that despite their sacrifices we’d let ourselves become a nation that appears to be driven by fear.

. . . . .

But at the airport, watching a 7-year-old girl go through a full body scan in public – just so she could fly out of the city of Los Angeles – made me wonder how much we have lost.